Tonight, in my ongoing redo-the-home-office project, I put together a bookshelf.

I did several like this some months ago, and Mickie was so intent on being right in the middle of everything that I literally had to assemble it around her, thus giving new meaning to the term “kit furniture”.

Mickie’s about 18 months old now. She may have just been trying to be a cool teenager, but as I was noisily constructing away tonight, she gave me a Look from the adjacent chair, displeased that I had disturbed her nap. If she had eyebrows she would have raised one.

But a few minutes later, she did walk all over the back of my masterpiece, and once it was upright, she jumped up briefly to check out one of the shelves. Since she didn’t leave an “Inspector 12” sticker anywhere, I’m going to convince myself that this was a return to kitten mode. Eeeeyup.

In the last few days Mickie has been acting strangely.

Well, more strangely than usual. She will go on a catfit-like spree, her tail lashing wildly (she often chases it because it’s acting like a wild animal) and the fur on her back twitching and writhing as though she’s being tickled by invisible fingernails.

One day I picked her up during one of these fits and started running my fingernails along her back in the area that was twitchy, and she settled right down and let me do this for as long as I wanted to. In the course of this, I dislodged mass quantities of shedding fur from under her guardcoat.

Twice more that same day as she was in the middle of a crazytail fit she jumped up onto my lap and looked at me, as though asking me to do some more of that soothing thing I did before. Since then, Chris has gone at the area with a soft brush designed to dislodge loose fur, and it’s done wonders for her. Apparently Mickie’s undercoat is very coarse and has trouble making its way out from under the outer guard-hair coat. Instead it stays trapped, the loose ends of the individual hairs tickling her skin.

She’s much calmer now, but she can still be incited into another fit if, for example, I sneak up on her and tickle here right there with, say, the corner of a catalog.

Cat Squawk Investigator.

Lately I’ve been noticing that whenever either Taz or Suzie Q makes a sound, usually in response to being petted, Mickie comes running to see what’s going on.

I think because she’s figured out that whenever Chris or I do something that warrants a squawk from either cat, there is either food or attention being handed out. And she wants her share, by golly.

She turned a year old last month, and is about the same size now as Suzie. But she’s barrel-chested and broad shouldered, and if she grows into those attributes she may turn out to be half mountain lion.

We’ve noticed over the years that cats have this habit of trying to bury things they find distasteful. If it’s not a real [ahem] in an actual litterbox, they’ll scratch around on the rug trying to bury, say, a wad of kleenex that didn’t quite make it into the wastebasket.

Just now Mickie started scratching around the bowl containing Taz’s special kibble.

Then she knocked a piece out of the bowl, sniffed it, and ate it.

And preceded to settle in and eat directly out of the bowl.

Our dog, Lucy, and our youngest cat Mickie, were playing in our bedroom yesterday.

Mickie would pop out from under the bed, and Lucy would chase her back under.

Our dog and cat were playing cat-and-mouse.

Taz is weirding me out. A couple of times I have seen him grab Mickie by the scruff and, well, act like a tomcat.

Now, he was about a year old when we adopted him, and was still an intact male up to that point. I often wonder if there might be hissin’-and-spittin’ images of him still running around that neighborhood today.

But dang it, he’s been neutered for more than nine years now. And it isn’t as if he’s had any practice in the meantime.. the other (spayed) female cats who have shared his life during these years would not have reacted well, to say the least. (Two words: Taz confetti.)

Of course, our little Mickie has been initiating quite a bit of kitten-mischief-type physical contact, and she and Taz are official wrestle-and-slurp buddies. But we had her spayed a couple of months ago, before any signs of going into heat (she was five months old at the time), so I would have thought she would be spared the tomcat-and-queen scene.

Maybe I’m overreacting here… this is all probably quite normal… but eeeeeeewwww!

When we lived in Alaska, I had a rabbit fur hat (yeah, I felt guilty, but it was so soft and warm…) I had to keep it away from Taz or else he would bathe it within an inch of its life. Well, now Taz finally has his own fur cuddle toy.

You can’t see it too well, but note Taz’s spiffy new collar.

Mickie does her best Elvis.

Mickie likes to make sure Lucy’s face is clean and shiny bright…

...including way down deep in her ears, which you would think would tickle like fury, but Lucy seems to be perfectly fine with it.

Taz and Mickie keeping me company on the sofa.